


bedrock

by cher



Category: The Bedlam Stacks - Natasha Pulley
Genre: Fingering, First Time, Fix-It, Human/Statue Porn, M/M, Risky Decisions in General, Sex Toys, Transformation, Xeno, Yuletide Treat, first time anal sex, risky sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-04
Updated: 2018-12-04
Packaged: 2019-09-07 04:09:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16846840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cher/pseuds/cher
Summary: Merrick and Raphael figure out how a human and a living statue—who might freeze for years without warning—can possibly have sex.Merrick figures out how to be there the next time Raphael does freeze.





	bedrock

**Author's Note:**

  * For [novembersmith](https://archiveofourown.org/users/novembersmith/gifts).



> With grateful thanks to karanguni for excellent beta.

Perhaps it was something about high places that touched off this particular evolutionary quirk. The peculiar mix of oxygen and nitrogen in the air, or a difference in the barometric pressure. Perhaps even just the isolation, allowing for the static, sustained population that would fail to throw the normal genetic barriers in the way of parallel evolution. 

Perhaps there was even some cross-pollination of the two populations, sustained through high-altitude air travel. Merrick hadn't yet learned enough of the local language to ask. 

However it had come about, Merrick seemed to have stumbled upon a second population of people with a great deal in common with the markayuq. They weren't quite the same—the difference seemed to be in the base composition of the stone, something like comparing sandstone to slate. He didn't yet know if their life cycle would be similar. He didn't think so. The Himalayan stone people were much more varied in their appearance. 

Where the markayuq were largely of an age, metamorphosing at roughly the same human-linear point in their lives and then showing age as stone would, this new population was varied. Some members were visibly elderly, their stone faces lined and forms creviced with folds of looser 'skin'. Some were very young, not out of their long-limbed adolescence. He had not yet seen a child, but was sure they must exist. 

Yet they did not seem to be born into their stone forms. If the ages varied so much, then either this population continued to show their ages on their stone bodies, and the stone was capable of shifting and changing over time. Or, which was the more interesting possibility to Merrick, these people were not evolutionarily different at all, but were a human population who could trigger the shift to a stone form intentionally. 

If that were possible, Merrick would do almost anything to obtain it. 

*

It was growing harder, visiting with Raphael. The longer they spent together, being honest in their affections, the more Merrick's body reminded him that while Raphael might have taken vows of celibacy, he certainly had not. He might be a man in his late fifties, but that part of him that wanted desperately to be with Raphael was a comparative adolescent, being woken so very late in his life. 

The day Raphael told him, laughing a little at Merrick's surprise, that most markayuq renounced their vows once their metamorphosis was complete—well, Merrick discovered in himself a very great capacity for the amorous. There was a great oasis of longing within him. While he'd sit chastely beside his beloved and declare himself content, feeling showered with riches just to be close, that newly stirring beast of desire fueled his dreams. 

They kissed sometimes, Raphael's stone lips cold and smooth on his, and his hands carefully wrapped around a book to stop him from grabbing Merrick if he got too carried away. Merrick craved more and knew himself to be greedy beyond his deserts. To have this much was more than he had ever dreamed for himself, and yet he did dream, now. Long, hot dreams full of Raphael's familiar form, sometimes flesh and sometimes stone. His subconscious scandalised him with the things he dreamed, so he must have absorbed more of the sailor's talk around him than he'd ever noticed as a young man. 

He woke up inconveniently aroused, and brought himself off alone in his bed, for they could not sleep in the same bed any more. It made him feel as heavy as if he were stone himself. 

He'd asked, once, stumbling and flushed with embarrassment, if the markayuq had sex the way humans did, and Raphael smiled and said that mostly they didn't, since the stone dulled the human impulses that drove the desire. But that didn't stop everyone, and of course some did. They'd all had flesh bodies once, with all the usual urges. Most things worked the same way. It was awkward, however, as no one wanted to freeze in a compromising position. 

Merrick shivered when he remembered it, inappropriately fixated on the idea of it, to be frozen that way. It was one of those things that seemed only to appeal to that dreaming part of him, and filled him with horror when he was awake. 

But they could. If they were desperately careful, if the things talked about by sailors in Merrick's long-buried memory were correct, and if the fanciful little book he'd acquired from India was in any way accurate. If Raphael would accept the risk of embarrassment, and Merrick the very slight (as he judged it) risk of injury. 

Raphael made his usual aloof attempt to deny the strength of his own desire, but Merrick’s need was so raw that he could not help but respond. Their last night together on one of Merrick’s many visits, they stole away. 

Merrick used all of his old smuggler’s cunning to slip them both under the notice of their chaperoning guards. Raphael laughed at him, enjoying the chase despite himself, and they slipped grinning into the most remote of the cloud city’s many rooms set aside for contemplation. 

They kissed hotly, Merrick desperate for Raphael, and his lover greedy for the contact. Merrick pushed him down onto the bench seat and roused Raphael, stroked his fingers firmly, reverently over his flesh-stone cock, marveling as it lifted and stood straight. 

He almost did not recognise himself, this confident and lustful creature acting as if in a delirium, doing these things for the first time. He lowered his head and licked at Raphael, took the smooth, cool phallus in his mouth and sucked, and he didn't feel ridiculous at all. He felt worshipful, transcendent, and the gentle back of Raphael's fingers against his cheek were a benediction. He didn't know if it felt like much of anything to Raphael, but the sight clearly moved him, and the act roused his own desire more than he had thought possible. 

The pressure in his trousers becoming unbearable, Merrick sat back on his heels, compensating easily with the whitewood cuff. Twenty-five years was a long time to settle into the ways of the thing, and he moved now as if it had always been a part of him. He fixed his eyes on Raphael's, hungry for the look of carnal desire he saw there. He felt pride, to have put that look on Raphael's face, which was so often aloof. Setting his teeth to his lip to relieve his urgency, he leaned back and unfastened his trousers so that Raphael could see him doing it. 

He drew himself out, and moaned softly with relief. His erection stood straight out in front of him, in full view of another person for the first time, and it was exquisite. To feel Raphael's gaze on him, the heat and weight of it, made him want to do anything at all to keep that rapt attention. He palmed himself, letting Raphael see—possibly for the first time as well, Merrick thought—another man on his knees for him, hard flesh straining toward him. 

They were both silent, some mixture of the fear of interruption if they were found and reverence for their coming together, so long delayed. They spoke with their eyes and hands, with that symmetry of thought that had crept up on them, as if they had in truth spent those twenty-five years together. Raphael, indoctrinated now by custom and personal fear, kept his hands curled around the bench seat he occupied, his weight pressing down into its cushioned top. His lips were parted, his expression rapt and beautiful. 

Merrick stood then, his movement strong and sure, and he took the jar of unguent from his coat pocket, the false phallus in its case from the bag he'd set beside them. He disrobed, alive all over with the feeling of his Raphael's eyes on him. The air felt charged, as if they could make it glow with the force of their love alone, no pollen required. A romantic notion, but one Merrick felt matched the occasion perfectly. 

He bent and kissed Raphael again, licking against his strange not-flesh tongue, his cold lips. Raphael touched him lightly, running his cool fingertips down Merrick's chest, and it was a feeling like liquid lightning on his skin. He knelt on the bench then, faced away and pressed unguent-covered fingers inside himself so that Raphael could see. His lover kept one careful hand on him, steady against his hip, and it made him feel grounded and wild both. 

He'd practiced this alone in his bedroom, in the Himalayas and Cornwall both. He hadn't known if the opportunity or the desire to follow through would ever come about, but he wanted to know his own limits if it did. And so he knew how long to work the muscle, how to adjust his own touch so that he prepared himself, let Raphael see, but did not push his own pleasure too far beyond recovery. 

And soon his lover tapped his hip, offered his two straight fingers for Merrick to take instead. And oh, Raphael inside his body for the first time, even just this—so dangerous, so wonderful, and yet not the whole of what they would do together tonight. His fingers were wider than Merrick's own, and of course harder, and colder. But the false phallus—a gift from Keita, given without ceremony or comment—was hard and cold as well, and so Merrick had had some time to learn to like the feeling. He'd learned, in fact, to crave it. 

He gasped a little, the feeling of Raphael's fingers inside him overwhelming, and in the silence of their stolen moments together it was loud. Merrick felt Raphael crook his fingers, just a little, and then startle and withdraw, having frightened himself. This was the difficulty, the loss of control they both sought and feared. No matter, they would both get what they wanted tonight, if Merrick had to stop the sun itself to make it happen. 

He pressed the false phallus into Raphael's hand and helped him push it inside himself. Raphael slid it in inexorably, once he started, one long, smooth glide, and Merrick bit his lip to stifle the cry he wanted to let out. It was one thing to do this to oneself; it turned out to be quite another for his lover to do it to him. It felt so good he almost stopped there, let his lover bring him to completion just like that. Raphael pushed it into him again and again, and he pressed back eagerly. But he wanted to be looking at Raphael when he came, his eyes fixed on his beloved stone face. 

The false phallus wasn't necessary to prepare him, really, but Merrick knew that Raphael would be reassured by it, by the carved, smooth stone slipping so easily into Merrick's body, and by Merrick's obvious enjoyment. He’d know that it was all right, when Merrick took him in. And thus reassured, Raphael made no move to stop him when he turned, laying the device aside, and sat astride his lover's lap. 

He looked down at Raphael, at his noble face not yet showing any weathering at all. He smiled, kissed him gently, and reached for the jar to coat his lover's cock generously. Raphael made a face, put his arms behind his back and gripped the bench back. Merrick could see in his expression that he'd scared himself, forgetting his control earlier when his fingers were inside Merrick. Merrick knew he wouldn't do it again, wouldn't risk their becoming trapped in such a terrible way. Raphael would keep his hands safely away. (And if Merrick sometimes dreamed of it, well, Raphael didn't need to know. It would only upset him.) 

Merrick felt his whole life spooled out behind him, as he knelt poised above his lover's slick cock. Everything before, that had brought him here, to a secret room in a floating city, with this most unlikely of men. It was a thing at once sublime and purely carnal. Raphael nodded to him then, unable to touch, and so he lowered himself, began working Raphael's cock into his body at last. His lips parted on a sigh, something between pleasure and relief. A little wider than the false phallus, it served only to increase Merrick's pleasure as he felt himself stretch to take him in. It felt like the closest he had ever come to a holy experience.

He moved over him, then, the pace all under his control, with Raphael pinned down by Merrick's human fragility. The pleasure on Raphael's face was transcendent, so whatever it was he could feel of Merrick, it pleased him a great deal. He didn't know if Raphael could, would ejaculate; he hadn't thought to ask and the oversight seemed silly now, as if he would ever hesitate to ask anything of his lover. But not now; now the silence between them had taken on a magical quality, as if the breaking of it would be a form of sacrilege. He had the wild thought that perhaps this was marriage; perhaps among the markayuq this was a ceremony of which he was ignorant. In his heart he had joined with Raphael so long ago that the question did not worry him, one way or the other. 

He rose and fell, taking Raphael into his body over and over, pressing him deep inside until his thighs ached, and his body felt stretched and hollowed out by the smooth, cold stone inside it, and then he rose and fell again. His pleasure was immense, lifting him out of himself, keeping him moving when his muscles screamed their protest. He looked down into Raphael's beloved face, and it seemed to Merrick that still they spoke silently, words of devotion and pleasure. 

It couldn't last forever. Merrick’s completion rushed through him, suddenly, the first burst indistinguishable from the transcendent pleasure he already felt. Then it was like riding a comet, a sharp wave of fulfillment that whited out his vision and stole Raphael from his sight for a precious second. He was aware of himself still moving, tightening down on Raphael inside him, his cock pumping out his seed to splash across their bodies, the evidence of their pleasure. 

And Raphael froze more completely than he had already, screwed his eyes shut and opened his mouth, a silent scream of carnal joy. To give that to him, to put that look of wild abandon on his stoic face—that was better than Merrick's own release. 

They caught their breath and regained their equilibrium according to each of their natures, and Merrick lifted himself slowly away. He wouldn't sit without wincing tomorrow, and would probably have a limp, but then he was used to that. He would count it a minuscule price for the wonder he'd shared with his lover. 

They sat together, still unwilling to break the charged silence. Eventually, they would go to their separate beds, on either side of Raphael's room. If they were lucky, no guard would watch them sleep. 

*

A year later and Raphael looked like going away into the stone again. It might be ten years or seventy when he woke again, and Merrick was not ready to face the rest of his life waiting. Nor was he willing to have Raphael wake to find his lover dead and gone. 

He nurtured his fledgling relationship with the Himalayan population of stone people, doing his best to hide his desperation. Eagerness was no friend to him here; he needed to show friendship and respect if he had any hope of learning their secrets. 

It was some years of discussion, his belaboured attempts at learning their language, many gifts brought and meals shared. At last they trusted him, allowed him to seek their stone cure. 

He still understood the process only vaguely. Words in other languages, where they described highly technical or spiritual practices were always the hardest to pin down. He didn’t care; every moment spent hesitating was another moment he aged, contrasting his form ever more sharply with Raphael’s strong body, who had metamorphosed in his prime. 

It was hope he held in his hands, when they presented him with the stone cure. 

He took it at the plantation. He'd thought of going to Raphael, giving his living flesh one last chance at the softer feelings that would soon be stripped from him. But he judged the risk too great, the outcome too cruel, should there prove to be a genetic element to the Himalayan transformation after all. He couldn't ask that of Raphael, either to have his hopes dashed, or worse, for the cure to simply kill him as his lover watched. No. He would make his attempt alone, at minimum inconvenience to everyone he knew. If he lived, if he shifted, he'd go to Raphael then. Let it surprise him. 

Merrick put his affairs in order, and set to recording his notes in his field journal. He still made sketches, usually of plants, but lately he had been making a stab at anthropology, somewhat out of necessity. He tried to leave good notes, so that Sing—old as the hills and sharp as a tack—could decide what was to be done should the worst happen. 

He expected to feel some fear as he contemplated the strange liquid cure. But he'd had a long life, and full one, and his chief wish was to be with Raphael now. He toasted the setting sun, and drank. 

The change was much less gradual than he'd observed in Raphael's people. Inside of a day, he felt his organs slowing down, a bizarre sensation that left him feeling calm and still. His fingertips lost some sensation, but seemed to make up for it in becoming sensitive to the smallest vibration. Heat and cold ceased to affect him, but physical impacts rang through him in a most unsettling way. 

He had to remind himself to dress. 

Most welcome of all, his leg—for the first time in all these years—stopped paining him. The cessation of that always-present ache made him feel as light as air, even as his body seemed to gain density with the change. The mechanism was amazing, and he tried hard to document the process, though he broke more than a few pencils in learning his new strength. 

After a week at most, he looked into his hand mirror and saw a stone man, not yet weathered, but the deep mottled grey of slate. It was startling, and the process was clearly different to Raphael's people. Merrick seemed to be stone all the time, and this population did not seem to suffer from the effects of catatonia. 

In any case, he was stone, and he moved and spoke with almost the speed of living flesh. Perhaps this difference would mean a lifespan still incompatible with the markayuq, but even so, they would be closer in years than they now were. 

Their stone lips could meet without a chaperone. They could lie together in the cloud city. They would be happy, as the world turned around them. 

Merrick boarded the next zeppelin, to his lover and eternity.


End file.
